1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recommending system, a recommending server, a content recommending method, and a recommender program product for recommending content provided by a content server to a user terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
As network-based data communications advance, so does also service which a server offers to provide prestored content, such as image and audio data, to a user terminal in response to a request for download.
Although the network is capable of transmitting data of predetermined size, the content, such as the image and audio data, is of large size. Accordingly, in some cases, data communications between the server and the user terminal become impossible with an increase in communications traffic in the network.
To deal with this problem, JP-A 2006-108831 (Kokai) (Patent Document 1) discloses a technique intended for the purpose of reducing the volume of network traffic. To achieve the purpose, the technique involves a procedure. Specifically, when a receiving terminal (or a user terminal) sends a request for data to a server, the server schedules the multicasting or broadcasting of the data to the receiving terminal and follows the schedule of data transmission. Meanwhile, the receiving terminal rearranges and uses the data received as scheduled by the server.
JP-A 2006-18626 (Kokai) (Patent Document 2) discloses another technique for controlling traffic for content distribution. In this case, a user pays the price for content to a content provider in order for a user terminal to download the content. To achieve a high degree of servicing efficiency and a high level of satisfaction with used service, the server in the technique controls the selling prices of content according to the status of computer resources while monitoring the computer resources.
However, the above technique disclosed in Patent Document 1 has a problem as given below. When downloading data, the receiving terminal, at time of sending a request for content data to the server, may not know the time at which receipt of the content data is possible. Specifically, assume a case where the content data is popular, and hence plural receiving terminals access the server all at once during a period of time between the time scheduled by the server and the time of broadcasting of the schedule. In such a case, not only downloading but also login takes time even at the scheduled time, and the actual time of completion of receipt of the content data is thus unknown.
This is the problem involved in the technique disclosed in Patent Document 1. The problem is caused by adoption of a method in which the server schedules content distribution only after the receipt of the request for data from the receiving terminal. In other words, the problem results from the technique being unable to predict what kind of content each of all receiving terminals is likely to download by issuing the request for data.
In the above technique disclosed in Patent Document 2, the selling price of content is set according to the status of the resources when the user terminal is about to download the content. Accordingly, the provided service cannot always fully satisfies the user demands. A reason is that the selling price of desired content to be downloaded is set high if the content is popular.